Are you worried you're not being the best parent you could be to your child with autism?
Today I'm giving some advice on parenting kids with and without special needs that I
learned from being in the autism world for two decades.
Hi.
I'm Doctor Mary Barbara, autism mom, board certified Behavior Analyst, and best selling
author.
Each week I provide my insights, usually about autism, right here on my YouTube Channel.
If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that now.
My two sons are young adults now and they're only 18 months apart in age, so I had my hands
full when they were young, especially when Lucas was diagnosed with autism.
I studied nursing in college and had a fair amount of psychology courses as an undergrad.
I also had a lot of management courses when I pursued my Masters Degree in Nursing Administration
from Penn.
I didn't realize even after all that education how ill prepared I was to be a parent, especially
to be a parent of a child with autism.
It wasn't until 2002 when I started to study applied behavior analysis, or ABA for short,
and became a behavior analyst that I learned better ways to parent both of my kids.
The number one way to be the best parent you can be to children with and without special
needs, in my opinion, is to learn how to teach them.
I didn't realize how much teaching was involved with parenting until I became a behavior analyst
in 2003 and worked directly with hundreds of children with autism and their siblings
and their families.
When children, when they're young, start to show signs of autism or have a lot of tantrums,
parents often don't know what to do since parenting strategies they may have used for
their older children or strategies that their friends are suggesting they use don't seem
to work with children who have limited ability to speak and maybe uncooperative to say the
least.
Parents are also getting a lot of different opinions from professionals.
Some professionals saying to take away a pacifier so their children speak more, and then other
professionals come in and say for sensory reasons they need the pacifier.
Parents really struggle with what to do for a lot of things.
While it shouldn't be work to teach typical children to talk, for instance, it usually
is a lot of work to teach a child with autism to talk or talk more, and it's a lot of work
to teach them how to do almost everything.
I definitely recommend using the science of applied behavioral analysis to teach your
child to increase communication and decrease problem behavior, but many parents are not
going to pursue formal education in applied behavioral analysis.
To help you get started, or to revamp what you're doing at home to become a better parent,
I created this brand new three step guide so you can begin to turn autism around for
your child, learning how to be his best teacher.
Since each child is different, my guide will help you do a quick
and easy assessment, make a plan, and learn how to keep records so you can get started
and make sure your child is making progress.
If you like this video blog, please give me a thumbs up, leave a comment, and subscribe
to my channel.
I'm on a mission to turn autism around for 2,000,000 kids by 2020.
I hope you'll join me by taking the first step and downloading this free guide to get
started today.
I'll see you next week.